Back in 2008, Amber Haines was the mother of three children under three years old. Her husband Seth wanted to create a meaningful Christmas gift for her and reached out to mom bloggers on the internet to write letters on the topic of motherhood. Seth shares, “I hoped the letters would include words of encouragement and mothering wisdom while perhaps providing Amber a toehold for the hard days. . . Over the next two months, letters poured in. Each letter represented a particular narrative, a different story.” I was one of the moms who responded to this original request. In 2012, some of the letters were compiled into an e-book and now Revell Publishing has created a gift book out of them.

These letters are beautiful and heartbreaking. They speak of the good days and the hard days, the sleep-deprived nights, and the feeling that children grow up so quickly. There are letters from expectant mothers and mothers of grown children and everything in between. There are letters from adoptive mothers and step-mothers, those who struggled with infertility, and those who found themselves unexpectedly pregnant. Each mother shared a piece of herself. Read this book with a box of tissues close by. You will laugh and cry and share in the journey.

While social media and the “mommy wars” can often pit us against each other – stay-at-home versus working mothers, breast versus bottle-feeding, homeschooling versus public school, free-range versus helicopter, vaccinate versus non-vaccinate, this book offers us the all-important reminders that we are all in this thing called motherhood together and that God is in charge. I was honored to be a small part of it.

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About Author

Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur is a life-long Roman Catholic, homeschooling mom of two boys and an adopted young girl. The editor of Today's Catholic Homeschooling, she is also the author of "The Catholic Baby Name Book" and "Letters to Mary from a Young Mother," and has a Master's Degree in Applied Theology. She blogs at http://spiritualwomanthoughts.blogspot.com